


thoughts of flight

by TypewriterLove



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Bodhi Rook Deserves Nice Things, Character Study, F/M, Happy Ending, Look I have a lot of feelings and thoughts about this damn pilot, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Rogue One Family, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 20:38:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9089839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TypewriterLove/pseuds/TypewriterLove
Summary: “I am the rebel pilot,” he mutters under his breath. But no, he thinks, no that’s not quite right. He feels the sand stuck to his forehead, his shoulders heavy with the comms wire, his mind full of the people he cares for. “This is Rogue One,” he says, patching into the comms tower, feeling the joy singing in his veins as he hears the rebel forces respond. And this, he thinks, as he watches the grenade come flying into the shuttle, bouncing delicately against the far wall, rolling gently to a stop, is for Galen Erso.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Thoughts of Flight by Edmund. This is unbeta'd, so apologies for any mistakes. Notes at the end.

Bodhi is a live wire, strung taught. He feels like he’s going to snap.

Ever since he joined training he’s been pumped full of Imperial stims that keep pilots sharp, keep their fingers twitching on the edge of their controls, ready to run, to fight, to die. A quiet mind isn’t allowed in the Empire. From the ages of ten to twenty five, Bodhi sleeps 4, maybe 5 hours tops. He doesn’t think anything of it. The bags that form like bruises, dark beneath his eyes, are just like every other pilot he’s ever met. The pilots all have the same indent around their eyes, across their forehead, the concave impression of goggles worn for so long they couldn’t imagine going without them. Pilots are wiry - stretched a little too thin over their framework. Their stims are high quality, synthesized on an Imperial medi-facility, and their bodies shake so hard it’s usually impossible to keep the food down. They have nutrient supplement shots instead. Bodhi can count most of his ribs- but so can every other pilot. He’s not special, and he knows this, and it’s okay.

 

It’s okay, he tells himself, and pretends it doesn’t feel like a lie.

 

* * *

 

When he meets Galen Erso, it feels like his first flight simulator.

At first, it’s just another superior who has his shuttle at their beck and call, another pair of broad shoulders with command stripes and a disapproving brow. But then the engineers are dismissed, and it’s just Chief Engineer Erso standing there. Bodhi can feel his hands twitching and he clutches them behind his back, hard enough to feel his fingertips tingle as circulation slows, and he casts his eyes desperately around the room so he doesn’t do something stupid like stare at Erso’s cheekbones - they look sharp enough to draw blood, but he's still full of the strange urge to _touch_ \- when a heavy sigh filled the room.

Bodhi fails to keep his eyes on the seam of the ceiling tiles to his far left. He risks a glance at Erso, who is abruptly looking both older and sadder, and hears him say _Call me Galen_. Bodhi stumbles over his words, always more graceful in flight than in speech, and when Galen smiles back at him he is right back in the simulator, strapped into his seat, feeling the zero-grav kick into effect. The sudden weightlessness in his chest makes him put a hand over his heart, so sure it will float away.

Galen always has time for Bodhi, no matter when he comes to deliver supplies. They have conversations over mess hall meals, in the engineering labs, while unloading in the shuttle bay. When Bodhi docks late at night, his steps echoing in the halls of a too-quiet base, his mind still whirling with thoughts of flight and things to tell Galen, the engineer never turns him away. They talk in his quarters with low voices, Bodhi still sweating in his flight suit and grimy with engine oil, eager with a hundred things to say and a thousand things he wants to hear, and Galen sitting on his bunk in his nightclothes, full of warm eyes and a small smile.

Months pass. Galen tells him about his wife (who was beautiful, and brave, and brilliant, and is _dead_. Bodhi almost weeps from the unfairness of it, that someone like Galen could meet such a soul only to lose her) and his daughter (a being made of pure stardust. _She could destroy planets, but she’d rather save them_ Galen had said one night, his voice soft and his eyes wet. Bodhi pretended not to notice) Everything Bodhi has ever held in his hands belonged to the Empire. But these moments, the quiet conversations when the line between very late and very early blurred into something nebulous, he treasures, hoards them away, locks them in a vault in his mind and feels his heart burn with pride.

When Galen puts a hand on the nape of his neck, directs him into the loading bay of his shuttle and mutters in an urgent voice about _Planet killer_ , Bodhi has no choice - he never did - but to nod. _Yes_ , he tells Galen. _Yes, I will do this for you_. Galen smiles at him, but his eyes are far away - with his wife, and his stardust daughter, and all the people who are not standing in front of him. All the people who are not Bodhi. Bodhi can feel his heart floating away as he sets a path for Jedha. _It’s worth it_ , he thinks, and tries not to picture Galen’s smile.

 

* * *

 

It’s his third day without stims, and Bodhi is scraped raw. Every color is too bright, every noise too loud. When the wind scrapes grains of sand against his skin, each speck feels like a dagger. Bodhi bites his tongue until it bleeds and doesn’t say a word. It’s fine. He has a mission, and he is going to deliver this message, and if these people would just _listen_ to what he has to say everything would be so much easier. He keeps his goggles on for the most part, even once the lenses are scraped to hell by the sandstorms. Everything softens a little, colors and details clouded by the glass, and it gets so much easier to look people in the eye when all he has to do is look in the general direction of their forehead. Of course, it gets much harder once some madman (or woman? Maybe neither? Bodhi didn’t really have time to task) orders a bag to be wrapped around his head in the middle of the desert.

 The tentacles against his skull don’t make things easier. Bodhi screams until his throat is bleeding, and all he can offer are the same three facts: I am the rebel pilot. I have a message from Galen Erso. It’s meant for Saw Gerrera. _I am the rebel pilot I have a message from Galen Erso it’s meant for Saw Gerrera. IamtherebelpilotIhaveamessagefromGalenErsoit’smeantforSawGerrera._

 When his mind trips into nothingness, it almost feels like a mercy.

 

* * *

 

Bodhi doesn’t know where he went, while he was in the prison cell.

Well, actually, that’s a lie. He does know, he just prefers not to think about it. When a voice reminds him of the most important thing of all - _I am the pilot. I have a message from Galen Erso_ \- he feels his heartbeat grow unsteady, pounding frenetically against his ribcage. Bodhi turns, sees a man with eyes like Galen’s. They’re older than they should be, full of dark things but somehow, they’re still kind. Bodhi shouldn’t trust something so simple but he’s helpless against those eyes in the face of a stranger. When he staggers outside, blinded and dazed and still half convinced this is a dream, that he’s still strapped in a chair, those things around his wrist, his waist, _in his mind_ , he feels a hand against his shoulder and sees those eyes, the man telling him _Let’s go!_

So he goes.

 

* * *

 

The man, he learns, is Captain Cassian Andor. He is quiet, but kind, and his hands are a storybook of callouses and scars. There is a droid, K-2, who has clearly been reprogrammed and seems delighted with the freedom offered by his new parameters. Bodhi feels as though he can relate. Chirrut and Baze both scare him, for different reasons. Baze seems entirely capable of pulling Bodhi apart with one hand. Chirrut seems capable of pulling him apart with one careful sentence. He respects, admires, and not-quite-avoids them both.

The woman, Jyn, is bright-eyed and dangerous. She burns whenever she fights with the captain, which is often. Bodhi is somewhat amazed that Cassian walks away without scorch marks. She is also, Bodhi realizes, Galen’s stardust daughter. He stares at her when he thinks he can get away with it, trying to find his smile in her lips, find his eyes in her face. She seems harder than Galen, full of stubbornness and sharp edges.

And yet, when she asks him about her father, the hard lines of her face melt into something softer. When Bodhi recounts the stories he would hear of Jyn, his brilliant daughter, who he swore would change the galaxy some day, her eyes are wide as a child’s. Bodhi offers up what he’d heard of Jyn’s mother, the stories he had heard of how Galen and Lyra had met, and when Jyn smiles, soft and overflowing with affection, his breathing gets a little funny. She looks exactly like her father. Bodhi can feel his heart break a little.

 

* * *

 

Galen dies.

 

Bodhi breaks a little more. 

 

* * *

 

There’s a lot to be said about the battle on Scarfi, but Bodhi didn’t know most of it until well after it was over. All he could patch together were the comms from Cassian and Jyn, asking him to do the impossible - not exactly a new request, to be honest - and he’s actually giving _orders_ , trying to figure out where the hell to direct people. If these people die it’ll be his fault, he realizes, and his hands shake so badly that he has to bite his knuckles to get back in control. He just needs to get the master switch flipped, and the shields offline, and the comm lines open, and ensure that the Death Star plans get transmitted. No big deal. He can do this.

“I am the rebel pilot,” he mutters under his breath. But no, he thinks, no that’s not quite right. He feels the sand stuck to his forehead, his shoulders heavy with the comms wire, his mind full of the people he cares for.

“This is Rogue One,” he says, patching into the comms tower, feeling the joy singing in his veins as he hears the rebel forces respond. _And this_ , he thinks, as he watches the grenade come flying into the shuttle, bouncing delicately against the far wall, rolling gently to a stop, _is for Galen Erso_.

 

* * *

 

Bodhi wakes up.

That was definitely not what he expected.

He is… somewhere white. Potentially the afterlife. He remembers his mother was religious, but Bodhi never went to church after he became a pilot and finds it difficult to imagine that he would qualify for whatever afterlife is out there.

There’s a dull beeping noise, sounding every few seconds by his left ear. Bodhi tries to turn to face it, and becomes intimately aware of the agonizing pain that shoots down his spine, poking threatening tendrils into his arms, his shoulders, until every nerve seems to be alight. He chokes on the feeling. Tears spring to his eyes, half-due to the pain, but mostly because he is _alive_.

What a wonderful, terrifying, improbable thing. 

His hands are wrapped tight with bandages, and bacta pads litter his arms and bare chest. It’s hard to gauge the state of his legs, as they are both covered in a blanket and currently sprawled over by none other than Cassian. Bodhi blinks, wonders if his mind has finally broken beyond all repair.

And yet, the rebel captain is actually there. There’s a three day stubble on his cheeks, signs of sleep loss under his eyes. When Bodhi tries shifting a leg (immediately biting back a curse at the feeling - he’s definitely got some more batca patches on, and for good reason) he can feel the solid weight of him against his calf. One arm is sprawled forward across the bed, the other hangs down. It’s being held loosely by Jyn, sitting back in a very, very uncomfortable looking chair, her feet kicked up against his bed, her head tilted back and eyes closed.

“They’re both sleeping.”

Chirrut smiles as Bodhi turns to stare. He is sitting cross-legged atop the bacta cabinet to the right of Bodhi’s bed. Baze leans against the wall besides him. Their shoulders are not quite touching, and Baze looks vaguely disapproving but resigned to Chirrut's choice of seating.

Bodhi has a hundred questions to asks. He tries to ask the first, coughs, and tries again.

“Estimated need for proper hydration is at 89.4% You humans are basically made of water, aren’t you?” K-2 steps briskly through the doorway, a cup with a straw held delicately between his fingers. Bodhi doesn’t really care to correct him as he leans towards the water. When he finishes gulping half the glass, he places an awkward hand over K-2’s and looks directly at his glowing optics.

“Thank you.” Bodhi offers. It’s hoarse, lower than his voice has ever been before, but he’s never meant a sentence more.

“Thanks are unnecessary.” K-2 insists, his head cocked. “Try not to get exploded again.”

Bodhi laughs, and every breath hurts but it’s entirely worth it. “I’ll - I’ll try.” he promises, and is rewarded with another sip of water. When he turns to Chirrut, the monk is still smiling.

“Did - is everyone - are we-?” Bodhi can think of a dozen questions, but he can’t think of a single ending. Thankfully, Chirrut understands.

“Yes.” he says. His eyes are warm, and focused somewhere just left of Bodhi’s temple. “Everyone. You may rest now.”

A wave of relief washes over him, as exhaustion urges his eyes to close. He’s warm. He’s safe. He is, however improbably, alive and surrounded by the people he cares for- maybe, his treacherous heart suggests, the people he _loves_. He is Bodhi, the rebel pilot, Rogue One, and he is okay.

 

It doesn’t feel like a lie.

**Author's Note:**

> I saw Rogue One today after I heard Carrie Fisher passed (rest in peace you incredible, brilliant badass) and now have a lot of feelings about hope and fatalism and how life is such a ridiculous, unlikely thing. There are nowhere near enough fics about Bodhi Rook, to the point that I'm actually posting my own writing (it's been a while; sorry for any errors.) This was initially supposed to end with him in the middle of a cuddle pile, and I'm half-tempted to do a sequel that's literally just Rogue One squad taking care of him. Kudos, comments and critiques dearly appreciated c:


End file.
